Venice

I arrived at Mabel's place on Halloween morning a few minutes before 6:30, so (not wanting to be early) before I went in I stood on the doorstep and took a few pictures of the illuminated Venetian views above the entrance to a shop across the street.

While I was taking the picture above, there was a creaking door behind my back and then a small voice exclaiming, "Grandpa!"

I spun around.

And there was Mabel in her pajamas with Mamma in the doorway, smiling with triumph that they had discovered me. They had decided to sneak out to the lobby and see if I was on the doorstep taking pictures, and there I was.

Then Mabel led me into the house for some quick & happy visiting with Mamma before she needed to go off to work in her beautiful striped raincoat – with numerous hugs and kisses from Mabel.

The first thing Mabel wanted to do, even before breakfast, was to pull out her small but flamboyant collection of hair doo-dads. Working in front of the big closet mirror she pointed to where she wanted pigtails and gave me tiny clips to make them.

Naturally Mabel also wanted to put a clip in my hair. It took several attempts before she got it arranged it just the way she wanted, but she persisted.

When we began to get hungry and the amusement-value of hair-clips began to wane, Mabel instructed me to take them out, carefully, and we went into her room, now full of morning sunlight, to get dressed for the day.

Yeti Rescue

When she wakes up in the morning Mabel spends about two minutes yawning and rubbing her eyes. After that, she sparkles wide awake. Tuesday morning I took this one, quick, sparkling picture at breakfast with Mabel in her Yeti Rescue Club pajama top. I meant to ask Mabel whether the yetis on the shirt are the ones who do the rescuing or the ones who get rescued – but forgot to ask. My granddaughter, in her eagerness for all of life, kept me too busy answering questions of her own (and reading books and fixing breakfast and washing hands and brushing teeth and choosing school clothes for the promise of a hot spring day in San Francisco).

Imperatives

Mabel woke up late on Friday morning and stayed in pajamas until lunch time. She worked with steady concentration on several interconnected projects of her own devising. These photos are tiny scraps of evidence salvaged by chance from this matutinal whirlwind (structured according to non-adult imperatives).

FoneFotoXmas

Mabel in the act of unloading her stocking on Christmas morning, an image broadcast to the world in real time by means of her mother's phone.

While Mabel plays with her new little objects, I am still wrapping gifts across town. These I will carry over to her house later today. She will surely like the Robot Wrapping Bag, at least. It contains small plastic animals she has been talking about but does not already possess in toy form – moose, kangaroo, hedgehog.

Blue Yesterday

Old Man Puzzled by His New Pyjamas

I am the baby who sleeps in the drawer.
Blue yesterday, and blue before –
and suddenly all these stripes.

– Bill Manhire (London Review of Books, 30 August 2012)

Image here

New

 
Mabel is growing and a new wardrobe of pajamas is coming into service. My daughter mad the Instagrams.

Babysitting Report

Mabel Watson Payne and I went home from the playground Friday evening on our own while her parents went out to dinner with friends. Even though the bath was planned for later, Mabel still got spruced up a little after all the outdoor exertion (and the sand) and put on fresh clothes.She enjoys picking out what to wear and put serious thought into picking this dress. 
 

This child's range of expressions is endless. The faster shutter on the new camera allows a better chance of isolating stills from this succession of miniature pantomimes, each one lasting only a second or two, as in TRAGEDY (above) and COMEDY (below). 

After the meal it was time for the long enjoyable bath. And then before we could put on pajamas we had to have the same pajama discussion we had last time I babysat. Mabel seriously objects to wearing any of her pajama suits that have built-in feet (which is most of them). She needs to be able to see her feet. So we have to find pajamas that will allow this. She did make one concession this time that she had refused last time, and agreed to very thin socks, because they still allowed her to see her feet well enough. 
 

Exceptional Polaroids

Summer Polaroids with Mabel and family and friends.